“Land is life, it’s culture, it’s what we are as human beings,” the now 39-year-old Afro-Colombian from southwestern Cauca province told Reuters in 2018 after winning the Goldman Environment Prize. Francia Márquez Mina is a single mother of two who was born in Yolombó, a village in the Cauca region and has defended Black and Indigenous land rights in Colombia since she was a teenager when at 13 the construction of a dam threatened her community. Francia Márquez Mina has been challenging illegal mining and the pollution of rivers and indigenous territories in Colombia, She has taken on multinational corporations, the government, and paramilitary groups in the country that is the most dangerous for environmental activists according to Global Witness. Márquez has survived one assassination attempt and received countless death threats, but she is still standing and even now running for President in Colombia. She could be the candidate for the Union of the left there! “Political participation for women like me is not easy, especially when we are willing to disrupt the status quo. It is dangerous. I thought about it before making this decision to run,” she told us. “But defying fear is part of accessing justice and it is what I have been doing all my life.” 💚 A documentary is currently being produced on Francia Márquez and her run for the Presidency: https://humanpictures.me/portfolios/igualada/ https://www.thenation.com/article/world/francia-marquez-brazil/ https://archive.revista.drclas.harvard.edu/book/mining-and-defense-afro-colombian-territory-community-yolomb%C3%B3-colombia https://www.franciamarquezmina.com/